


rinse and repeat

by fruitwhirl



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, amy and jake doing laundry, just a total fluff piece, quick mention of karen peralta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 19:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14027256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitwhirl/pseuds/fruitwhirl
Summary: Because he lives in New York, he has thus far never lived in a building with its own laundry unit, and he often finds that he can only drag himself once a month the four blocks to “Double Bubble”—where the dirty linoleum floor, for some reason, is always littered with wet, gray socks, and for the past three visits, there’s the same couple who loudly argues over the temperature setting on the dryer when Jake just wants to watch Adventure Time on his phone with the shitty laundromat wifi.Suffice to say, months go by with the pile in the corner of his bedroom growing both in size and smell.Which is why dating Amy Santiago, who raises an eyebrow at him when he has crumbs on his desk, is absolutely frightening. Thankfully, when they stumbled into his apartment after their first date, it was too dark and she was too focused on staining his jaw blood red with her lipstick to notice the mountain of boxers and t-shirts growing out of the floor by his trashcan.





	rinse and repeat

**Author's Note:**

> for emma (@fourdrinkamy on tumblr) who once said "why do i love the idea of stupid stuff like jake/amy doing laundry???" and i immediately started writing this because i too love the idea of stupid stuff like jake and amy doing laundry. 
> 
> just as a preface, i have been to a laundromat once in my life, and all of my knowledge about laundromats comes from the internet and from my experience doing laundry at college and having people take out my clothes when i still have thirty minutes left in the dryer.

Early Sunday mornings, nine year old Jake Peralta would always clutch a roll of quarters in his small, left hand as he carried a bottle of green laundry detergent from the bodega down the street in his right, his mother trailing ever so slightly behind him. Three blocks from their miniscule apartment would lie their destination, a run-down twenty-four hour laundromat with faded red letters spelling out “Wishy-Washy.”

Sitting on one of the cool metal benches, helping his mother sort through paint-covered clothes and his _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle_ pajamas and digging through pants pockets looking for forgotten coins and scraps of paper quickly became one of his favorite activities as a child, oddly enough. He enjoyed the hour or so it took to wash and dry the clothes, as he got to watch the soap operas that played on the little televisions while his mom graded beside him. When he was ten, he even made a game out of scrutinizing every customer that came in for observation reasons, picking out little pertinent details about the man who wore a striped sports coat with a pair of rainbow leggings tucked into his laundry basket. Jake always told himself that this was what cops did every day to solve murders and kidnappings (once he was even convinced that the elderly lady with auburn curls and a paisley dress killed her husband, but his mother just hummed noncommittedly).

Adulthood doesn’t hold the same pleasant experiences regarding laundromats.

Because he lives in New York, he has thus far never lived in a building with its own laundry unit, and he often finds that he can only drag himself once a month the four blocks to “Double Bubble”—where the dirty linoleum floor, for some reason, is always littered with wet, gray socks, and for the past three visits, there’s the same couple who loudly argues over the temperature setting on the dryer when Jake just wants to watch _Adventure Time_ on his phone with the shitty laundromat wifi.

Suffice to say, months go by with the pile in the corner of his bedroom growing both in size and smell.

Which is why dating Amy Santiago, who raises an eyebrow at him when he has crumbs on his desk, is absolutely frightening. Thankfully, when they stumbled into his apartment after their first date, it was too dark and she was too focused on staining his jaw blood red with her lipstick to notice the mountain of boxers and t-shirts growing out of the floor by his trashcan.

He doesn’t have time to do anything but shove the heap into his closet between then and two nights later, when Amy arrives to his apartment after a long day of dealing with the Vulture, of dealing with the threat of Jake getting demoting over their nascent relationship. But it doesn’t matter, because she’s here, and she’s smiling softly, and she’s wearing leggings and an oversized academy shirt he’s sure she stole from Terry at some point. And she’s holding a large brown paper bag in her hands that most definitely contains warm pierogis.

Frankly, Jake thinks that she’s just as concerned with the takeout as he is, because she kisses his cheek softly—“Not so sloppy this time, Dora”—and after dropping the bag on his coffee table, she makes a beeline to his kitchenette, rising on the balls of her feet in order to grab the plates that are inexplicably on the top shelf of his cabinet. When she returns to the couch with the dishes, he’s got the television flipped to _Cutthroat Kitchen,_ and he can’t keep himself from grinning as she sits on the cushion next to him, tucking her legs underneath her.

His laundry problem doesn’t even cross his mind until when, during the episode where one of the chefs attempts to make meatballs while in a colorful ball pit, Amy excuses herself to use his restroom, and Jake nods in acknowledgement until she’s gone and he remembers that she’ll pass the underwear mountain on the way because he left his closet door _wide_ open. And he freezes, but she never screams, so he thinks he might survive this.

And then she comes back, smelling like the cinnamon soap she bought him for his birthday a few months ago, and because they’re both done with their food, their wrappers and napkins and plates scattered on his coffee table, when she drops down next to him again, she leans into his side with her cheek resting on his shoulder so that he can just barely catch a whiff of her lemon shampoo.

It’s really nice.

Between commercial breaks, they bounce around ideas of ways to get around the Vulture’s threat. After a particularly uninteresting episode of _Chopped,_ they finally reach the solution of recording him at the funeral tomorrow, and by the time the next episode starts—“Tapas Time,” which makes Jake laugh—she’s curled up fully against him, and they’re chatting away, aimless, while one of the chefs accidentally sets his pan on fire in the entrée round. With his arm slung around her back and his fingers combing through the loose waves, he considers himself feeling pretty damn content.

It’s not until the dessert round that Amy pulls back just a bit, glancing up at him with soft, imploring eyes. “Do you want to do laundry with me this week?” He thinks his heart stops, but seeing his face, stricken with panic, she swiftly continues. “I mean, my machine’s broken right now so I’ll have to go to the laundromat anyway, so….”

After a moment he realizes that he’s nodding, inexplicably grateful that she has not decided to break up with him over the mass of clothes on his carpet.

Four days later finds them at “Clean and Green” just before dawn, with the sun peeking over the buildings, touching the skyline with the barest hints of flushed pink and faded yellow.  The mat’s relatively empty, with the only other customer being an older man, who’s reading what looks to be a cookbook on the other side near the single television.

Beside him, Amy’s humming along to the Beatles song playing quietly on the overhead speakers, and carefully sorting through the clothes he had haphazardly tossed into his laundry bag (she’d organized hers by colors, darks, whites, and delicates before she came). In turn, he is finagling his underwear and socks into a separate pile, and for a brief moment, he wonders if exposing his girlfriend—whom he likes _very_ much—to the biohazard that is his laundry is a mistake. But then he steals a glance over at her, and she’s bobbing her head up and down to the beat of “Hey Jude,” her ponytail swinging along with her movements, and she seems so happy, he thinks he couldn’t have fucked it up _too_ badly.

In that moment, her gaze flits up to meet his, and the small smile she tosses at him makes his heart swell in a way that even Boyle would make fun of him for it. It’s barely seven in the morning and by all measures, she really has no business looking as ethereal as she does at this very moment under the harsh fluorescent lighting, clothed in an old sweatshirt and shorts, her bare cheeks a little pink, and wisps of hair escaping from her up-do to frame her face, and everything about her is almost unbearably soft.

Because her shoes are flat for once, it doesn’t take much for him to pull her to him (his adult-sized _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles_ boxers still clutched in his fist) and press his lips into her hairline. She sighs something light, and he thinks he wants to bottle up that sound. And then she tilts her chin up to kiss him slow on the mouth, her left palm sliding to cup his cheek and he briefly wonders if he remembered to brush his teeth before focusing again on taste of her mint toothpaste and coffee.

With Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” playing faintly in the background, he sinks into the moment, and just as his hands have drifted to rest on her hips, there’s a very forced clearing of a throat behind them that forces them to jump apart.

Turns out, it’s just the old woman from the counter, but her polka-dot-sleeved arms are crossed and her bright pink lips are set in a harsh frown and Jake is honestly a little terrified. When he glances down at Amy again, she’s biting her bottom lip, worried, and he knows she’s about to start sputtering if he doesn’t say something soon.

So he apologizes to the elderly employee, who huffs before returning to her desk. Now, Amy’s turned back to the pile of his laundry, but she’s looking up at him. She takes a deep breath, her cheeks still flushed. “Let’s just go ahead and get these into the machines, and then I’ll go by Bailey’s and grab us both breakfast?”

While there’s a lingering feeling that the old lady is still watching them, he grins and pecks her on the cheek in agreement and that warmth returns to his chest.

Fifteen minutes later, the clothes are spread across three machines—Jake is sure that if anyone else was here, his girlfriend would get murdered for it—and Amy’s settling down next to him on the little bench, with two sesame bagels and coffees and it’s been nearly twenty-three years since he’s been so content in a humid laundromat at seven in the morning on a Sunday.

(Does he convince her to let him push her around in one of those little laundry carts? _Maybe_.)

Over the next year, they find themselves falling into a pattern that reminds him a little of his childhood, where she’ll do her laundry with him every Sunday morning they have off together, and they’ll get bagels and coffee and chat about their week while Shirley (the name of the employee) glares at them and honestly, it’s one of the things he misses most when he’s in Florida, because in that stupid WITSEC house he has his own laundry machine unit but no Amy Santiago and what’s the point of washing clothes if there’s no Amy to kiss him softly on the cheek when he successfully gets the chili stain out of his flannel.

Moving in together completely changes the routine that they’d re-established when he came back, but in the best way possible, because now they don’t have to leave the apartment and they don’t have to wear actual clothes and he can press her against the washing machine and drop slow, languid kisses down the column of her neck without Shirley interrupting them.

And, really, they don’t _need_ to do laundry together every weekend, but they still find themselves surrounded by color-sorted mounds of clothing.

It becomes such a natural habit for the both of them that they keep it up even while Jake and Rosa are dealing with the trial, and he nearly passes out one Sunday morning when he’s digging around his sock drawer to look for the little velvet ring box and he can only feel wadded up socks. And then he realizes that he left it in his jeans pocket (the weight of it calms him down), and his stomach drops to his knees because he remembers that he had put that pair in the laundry, which Amy is sorting through right now, and he knows that she checks his pockets because he tends to shove loose change and receipts in them.

With his heart racing, he speed walks towards the living room, breathing a sigh of relief when he sees the jeans still crumpled up in the unsorted pile. He kisses the top of her head before settling down next to her, because grabbing the pants now would be much too conspicuous (and really, deciding to marry one of the best detectives in the NYPD means that he has to be much more careful).

He’s turning one of her shirts inside out when she reaches for his jeans.

In a moment of panic, he drops her blouse and picks up a pair of her underwear, shouting, “Amy! It’s your underwear!”

She jumps at the sudden noise, then furrows her eyes at the garment in his hands. “What’s wrong with them?”

“Um—nothing, just, they’re your _panties.”_

“You’ve seen me naked more times than I can count. You literally took those off of me yourself.”

He groans internally. “I know, I just, it’s _your_ underwear.”

She furrows her eyebrows, but instead of responding, she just chooses to put his jeans down on the carpet and reach for her underwear. In the transaction, Jake attempts to grab the pants. “I’m just gonna take these for a moment.”

“You spilled ranch on those.” Amy’s frowning now, bemused.

“Only a little bit.”

She rolls her eyes, but lets him take them anyways, and he’s almost out of the living room, almost at their bedroom door, when he glances back to see Amy turning a floral sweater inside out and her nose is all scrunched up and she’s so adorable that he can’t help but call out, “I love you.”

And she looks up at him, grins softly.

“I love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you think in the comments below while i try to ignore reading _all the king's men_ for class, and hit me up with prompts at [my tumblr](http://dmigod.tumblr.com/ask).


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